Can you break your neck and not know it?

Patrick Worrall did.

A longtime steeplechase rider from Upperco, Worrall learned after a fall last month that he had suffered a fractured vertebra. The good news? The neck was broken years ago and has already mended nicely.

Worrall got the somber news six days before the Maryland Hunt Cup. Nonetheless, he chose to ride in that race but dropped out at midpoint when his horse balked at jumping a fence.

Worrall, 37, can’t understand how he could have no recollection of having suffered an injury of that magnitude.

"The doctors said it was a pretty serious fracture," he said. "But I will keep riding – and keep tabs on my soundness. It’s a dangerous world out there, but this is a beautiful sport.

"People talk about the thundering hooves, and how each rider has a bucket of courage – and how, as you get older, you start to run low on courage and scrape the bottom of the bucket.

"At this point, I feel that I still have something in that bucket."